The one thing that may surprise audiences who watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier is that it is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, two men with strong comedic backgrounds. They might be the last two people you’d think would direct an action film, let alone a sequel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Now in our interview with the two directors, they talk inspiration, source material, working with Joss Whedon, and more. Hit the jump to read out coverage of the press day.

How did you thread the needle as it were to maybe avoid taking this film towards anything too, I guess, recent? I’ve heard that Three Days of a Condor was a reference point for you.

Joe Russo: Yeah. I don’t know. You know, we’re making a political thriller and we might have done the opposite of what you’re asking about. We tried to to run at what’s happening in the world today with the movie. You know, we think somebody’s trying to stop me from saying what I’m about to say. Yeah, so we were thinking about what’s going on in the world with preemptive strikes and the president’s kill list and then, you know, the whole Snowden thing came out after we were shooting, but it was just reflective of that was sort of the tip of the iceberg of all of the other sort of elements that were going on in the world that we were thinking about. I mean we tried to give the movie some sort of make it reflective of our real world condition and our real world stakes even thought it’s a fantasy expression of what that is.

If you can, what other source materials were there and what made the Winter Soldier so distinct?

Joe Russo: Yeah. I’m not sure I understand the other source material reference.

Anthony Russo:Well, the source material for this is that Brubaker’s Run called the – about the winter soldier that came out, I think in 2005, and as we said, it’s tone is very different from the first film. So that was the source material we drew on obviously, and Joss has said this, it’s called the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it’s not a direct interpretation of that, but it’s borrowing tone and it’s borrowing characters and it’s borrowing themes, but that was the strongest source material for this movie

Joe Russo: For us, it was just a function of tone. I mean, the source material from Bruba it’s an espionage film.